“Should I write?” – That is a question that Gaspard Koenig never really had to ask himself. For him, the answer was both obvious and a matter of genetics. “I waited for something to click, without pushing myself,” he says at the ripe old age of 23. He was also waiting for some free time. This brilliant young student, who reaps academic honours – including a diploma from the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and passing the agrégation de philosophie (a rigorous national philosophy competition) – like others collect medals, finished his master’s degree in philosophy in three months so that he could spend the rest of the year on his first novel, Octave Avait Vingt Ans (Octave Was 20), inspired by a Marcel Proust character. Three years later, living in a loft in New York’s Soho and surrounded by models (!), he took classes at Columbia University while writing Un Baiser à la Russe (Russian Kiss), his second work, which received considerable attention. “My college preparatory studies made me comfortable with ideas, language and concepts – in short, they gave me the confidence and cultural context I needed,” he says. “I’m not afraid of the blank page.” Now that he’s working on his doctorate in philosophy while also teaching college courses, he will be able to get to work on Roman de Condillac, which describes the mental processes of a New York intellectual who is swept away in a bizarre philosophical system and ends up losing all touch with reality. Apart from these activities, Koenig loves life, the horse he rode while searching for the world’s oldest plant in the Namibian desert, and Balanchine’s ballets. What could be more normal that that?

AGE: 23 I PASSIONS: writing and puzzles. I PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE: too young to have one. I GOALS: to buy an old tower in Scotland and lock himself up there to write. I FAVOURITE WRITERS: Jean Giono and Casanova.